Jan 22, 2020
Best Live
Show:
JONATHAN
BREE (New Zealand), at Rickshaw – an intimate
experience to the most unique show I have ever seen outside of
Skinny Puppy
ORANSSI PAZUZU
(Finland), at Cornerstone – the Finnish are the only men that look
good with man-buns
PINK TURNS BLUE
(Berlin)/NEAR DARK FEST, at The Uptown – romantic
dark wave festival introducing me to female-led The Ire (Detroit)
and Yama Uba (Oakland)
SHE PAST AWAY
(Turkey/UK), at Neck of the Woods – on my birthday no less!
Sold out, the bay area showed UP; and I met some really nice people
that night
STUMPFEST FESTIVAL,
at Mississippi Studios – we got to see our friends Terry Gross and
hang out in Portland
PETER MURPHY (UK),
at The Chapel – he sang the entire Deep album and special songs
from Love Hysteria and I was pretty much in tears the whole
show
Heavy
Metal/Retro/Doom
KRYPTOS
(India), album – Afterburner
Song: Dead of Night
(0:25-5:23)
— Nostalgic heavy metal that is
catchy without being repetitive, with a fiery evil singer.
Everything we want from a sword wielding witch.
Runners-Up:
Traveler (CAN), album - S/T
— Damn straight, guys fucking rock.
Spirit Adrift (AR), album - Divided by Darkness
— Nate Garrett’s vocals bring life to his lyrics. This is
heart-wrenching heavy metal.
Crypt Sermon (Philly), album - The Ruins of Fading Light
— This album goes on for days; full on lyrical genius sung by a
doom-master.
Horseburner (WV), album – Fathoms
— Similar to their brethren West Virginia band Brimstone Coven with
southern charm and whiskey vocal, but with a unique harder
edge.
Atmospheric/Melodic Black
Metal
MISÞYRMING (Iceland), album -
Algleymi
Song: Með Svipur á Lofti
(6:51-13:52)
— Revels in the torment, vocalizing
their surroundings in a haunting, frosty black metal with different
styles and energy.
Runners-Up:
Belenos (France), album - Argoat
— Belenos vocals are rippling
energy. He rolls over achingly melodic guitars, entrenching
the sound with more soul. This is not black gaze, this is raw,
thoughtful and immense with accompanying cathedral vocals.
The Great Old Ones (France), album: Cosmicism
— There is nothing like French brooding. The Great Old Ones
use blast beat heavy lead-ups and French rasps that bleed into deep
unexpected loveliness.
Thrash
NECROPANTHER (Denver),
album - The Doomed City
Song: Death at Hand
(14:25-17:19)
— Necropanther’s vocalist is
an insane alien beast lining riffs and groovy thrash and
monster death.
Runners-Up:
Illyrian (Alberta), album –
The Entity
— Canadian fists flying to speed,
technically tempoed, and viciously vocalized.
High Command
(MA), album - Beyond the Wall of
Desolation
— Warm thick guitar that chomps,
romps and punches.
Inculter
(Norway), album – Fatal Visions
— Hammer precise drums and earth
shattering riffs to keep it real.
Algebra
(Swizerland)
— Technical thrash with
disjointed proggy tempos.
Sludge
INTER ARMA
(VA), album - Sulphur English
Song: A Waxen Sea
(17:50-25:12)
— Refined sludge in the form of
dreamy and meditative that bleeds into filthy and proggy, and
experimental becomes post-metal,
Runners-Up:
Terre (Belgium), album -
S/T
— Creeping, deep into the earth
is a writhing vocal. This is where the band starts,
penetrating its filth with a down-tuned dirty thick bass.
Fange (France), album - Punir
— Fange has it all, including noise, industrial, hardcore, sludge,
laid atop a slab of atmospheric black metal.
Rorcal (Switzerland), album - Muladona
— Thick pummeling drums in a
vicious black and death metal and abrasive core.
Lord Mantis (Chicago), album - Universal Death
Church
— Sludgy, dense, and textural,
with melodic and groove in the mix.
Modern
Death
WACHENFELDT (Sweden),
album - The Interpreter
Song: Ut (26:02-33:30)
— Savage drums and riffs
crushing each other into pinpoints of compressed blazing
horror-filled thrashing and swelling sharp guitar solos and
harmonies.
Runners-Up:
Tomb Mold
(Toronto), album - Planetary
Clairvoyance
— Pummeling drummer is also the
blistering vocalist, both instruments their own beasts. Guitars
follow on a wild ride breaking apart the ferocious death
metal.
Light Dweller
(AR), album – Incandescent Crucifix
— Holy shit this is a huge album;
jagged, angular, sharp and complex.
Ceremony Of Silence
(Slovakia), album – Oútis
— Psychedelic death metal now?
Expand the brain and then pummel it into pieces, living the
Slovakian dream.
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
(Chile), album - Teufelsbücher
— Angular weird proggy death with
refreshing piano.
Arallu
(Israel), album – En Olam
— Middle eastern ethnicity fully
integrated in explosive death metal. Infectious, unique and deeply
headbang-worthy.
Modern Black
Metal
SCHAMMASCH (Switzerland),
album – Hearts of No Light
Song: Ego Sum Omega
(34:21-42:09)
— Emotional and gruff baritone
juxtaposed with shimmering instrumentals in a soaring, majestic
black metal that drizzles into a goth mist, proggy interludes, and
retro doom.
Runners-Up:
Deathspell Omega
(France), album - The Furnaces of
Palingenesia
— The vocalist is at the
forefront, a grunting guttural menace, creating a horror-atmosphere
where the plodding tempos and strange mesmerizing guitars
follow.
Svartelder
(Norway), album – Pits
— Being chased down a wind-swept
black metal mountain by a rabid vampire in a hot folk outfit.
Completely under the radar.
Mesarthim (Australia), album -
Ghost Condensate
— Electronics within a shrieking
black metal is just, surprising.
Guðveiki
(12/18) (Iceland), album - Vængför
— Another explosive alien black
metal offering from Iceland, raw and progressive and
scary.
Alternative
DIÄT (Berlin), album -
Positive Disintegration
Song: We (42:49-46:38)
— Old school alternative alternating
from poppy to ambient to gothy-dance to noise and
punk.
Runners-Up
Boy Harsher
(MA), album – Careful
— Massachusetts duo with deeply
emotional and stylistic dark and minimal wave supported by velvety
female vocals.
TR/ST
(Toronto) album – The Destroyer
— I cannot tell you how much I
love this lead singer. Just, love.
Evil Male
Vocals
LORD MANTIS (Chicago), album
– Universal Death Church
Song: Fleshworld
(47:25-55:30)
— Vocals scratch and rasp and
screech and whisper horror.
Runners-Up
Vortex of End (France), album
– Ardens Fvror
Profanatica (CT), album - Rotting Incarnation of God
Vacivus (UK), album - Annihilism
Negator (Germany), album – Vnitas Pvritas
Existentia
Female
Vocals
VENOM PRISON
(UK), album – Samsara
Song: Sadistic Rituals
(55:54-59:38)
— Beastly muscular vocals accompanied
by brain-bashing, stunning, surprising, dense, REQUIRED death metal
mixed with aggressive hardcore.
Runners-Up
Vale (Oakland), album – Burden of Sight
Immortal Bird (Chicago), album – Thrive on Neglect
Bethlehem (Germany), album – Lebe Dich Leer
False (MN), album - Portent
Freedom of Fear (Adelaide), album – Nocturnal
Gates
Best German Black Metal,
#2 Album
KRATER (Germany), album –
Venenare
Song: Atmet Asche
(1:00:29-END!)
— The best albums are indirect, they
are unexpected, they are filled with a million facets that are
undiscoverable. My favorite black metal is this textured
journey, and Krater all in a dystopian package.
Runners-Up
Imperium Dekadenz
(Germany), album – When We Are Forgotten
— 2 piece creating diverse and
textured sound, a glossy, foggy, ethereal black metal, cascading
desolation and sorrow.
Thormesis (Germany), album –
The Sixth
— Desperation-lined vocals
creates heartfelt melancholy not shying away from sweet melody and
instrumentals; and organic drumming steering away from machine
beats. The whole album is explosive in emotional
energy.
Verheerer (Germany), album -
Monolith
— Brooding and theatrical with glorious and vivid compositions, but
still fucking rocks out.
Schattenfall GER), album -
Melancholie des Seins
Chanting poetry from a new
vocalist in this sophomore album.
Negator
(Germany), album – Vnitas Pvritas
Existentia
— Fantasy world of monsters and
battles and horns that creates just a blast. Whimsical, if
your brain was fucked.